Page 67 of Harper

Joe

Harper sits down a little ways away from me, folding her hands between her legs and staring down at them.

“You’re not going to like it,” she murmurs.

I recall another conversation between us that started like this, and so I think she’s probably right. I probably won’t like whatever she has to say. But I am still convinced that I can love her through it, despite it or because of it. I just need to know what it is.

“Tell me anyway,” I say. “All of it.”

“This is going to be hard for me.” She purses her lips. “Don’t interrupt me, okay? Not until the end.”

“I promise.”

She nods her head and takes a jerky, jagged breath, her eyes still cast downward.

“You may or may not remember the Halloween of senior year. College, not high school. When I called you that night, you were at a party. It was loud. Really, really loud, and you needed to call me back because we couldn’t hear each other.”

I do remember, but I also promised not to talk, so I grunt an “uh-huh” to let her know I’m following.

“Something happened that night…” She pauses here, clearing her throat. She rubs her hands together, and I can hear her breathing—shallow and jerky. Jesus, what happened? I’m about to reach for her, to try to comfort her, when she continues. “That night, I found out I was pregnant, Joe.”

Wait. “What?”

She looks up at me. “You said you wouldn’t interrupt.”

I stare at her, a million questions going through my mind, but I say nothing. I nod once. My heart has started pounding, almost uncomfortably, but I need her to keep talking.

“We’d had sex right before going back to school. The condom broke, remember? I promised I’d get the morning-after pill, but I…I was going back to school, and I was so busy, and I…oh, god, Joe, I forgot.” Tears snake down her face, glistening in the silvery darkness of a rainy Skagway night. “I never got the pill. I was two months pregnant by the time I figured it out.”

Jesus Christ.

There’s this strange coldness in my stomach as I process what she’s saying.

Harper was pregnant with my baby ten years ago.

Harper was pregnant. With my baby. Ten years ago.

Harper was pregnant with—

“I called you that night to tell you, to talk it out with you, to try to figure out what to do. I was so young. We were so young. We weren’t ready to be parents.”

This statement hits me funny. I don’t like the way she uses the word “we.”

Maybe I was ready to be a parent. Maybe I—

“But when you couldn’t hear me, when you couldn’t talk, at first, I decided that was—I don’t know—a reprieve, maybe. A chance for me to think. While I waited for you to call me back, my mind went wild. If I had a baby…if I had to be a mom…I wouldn’t be able to travel. My life would be over. You’d want to keep it. I knew you’d want the baby, but Joe, I wasn’t ready to be a mom. Nowhere near ready. I had barely processed my mother’s death. I wasn’t done with college. I had dreams. I had plans. I couldn’t—I mean, Joe, I didn’t want…”

She pauses, rubbing her hands on her knees.

That coldness in my gut starts spreading, fanning out to my groin, to my heart. It makes me shiver. It makes my voice hard.

“Did you get an abortion?”

“I made an appointment to have one.”

“Jesus,” I murmur, blinking my suddenly burning eyes. She killed it. She killed our baby. My heart twists so painfully, it makes my stomach flip over. Oh my god. Oh my god. “I’m gonna be sick.”

“Wait! Joe, wait! I have to tell you—”

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